Storytelling

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Raising My Son Is A Psychosocial Experiment

May 9, 2012 at 9:51 pm , by 

17 months.

At best, being a parent feels like a big psychosocial experiment. The goal?

To not only help my son survive to adulthood, but to teach him how to “be normal,” yet at the same time lead him to be an individual.

The ways I teach him by my example on how to verbally communicate, how to express emotions, and how to be a positively contributing member of society… well, it totally has a major effect on how he turns out.

Compared to any other investment, raising a child for the first time doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on paper.

Why should I be in charge of helping raise a kid from infancy? I wasn’t trained or ready for this by any means; simply not qualified.

Now that he’s nearly a year and a half, I finally feel confident enough to say I can get by doing this dad thing.

As you’ve just witnessed in the 37 second video clip above, my 17 month-old son willingly and preferably eats not only prunes but also spinach. Yeah, that’s not normal for most toddlers… or humans of any age.

As Steve Urkel would say, “Did I do that?”

Has my 17 months of parenting him caused him to actually like prunes and spinach? Or is it just the rare chance that he actually wants to eat those foods?

I guess we can’t know for sure, but I’ll take credit for it from anyone who is willing to give it to me.

After all, I personally I am a big fan of psychosocial experiments. At work today, I wore bold green corduroys with a clashing green necktie and a mint green shirt; just to see who in my office would assume I was being serious.

Even worse, on Monday I wore a vintage burnt orange leisure suit and tomorrow I will wore a white suit with a red Hawaiian shirt. And yes, there are people in my office who don’t realize it’s a joke. They truly believe I have that horrible of a fashion sense.

Another way I like to psychosocially experiment with people is on Facebook. I have this habit of writing bogus status updates that always involve me asking advice.

There was one where I needed to get a face tattoo removed by the weekend. Another where I was considering getting a nose job (making it bigger, not smaller) in order to be taken more seriously as a leader.

My latest hoax involves me accidently hitting a Bald Eagle with my car and sustaining its life by feeding it Children’s Tylenol and whiskey in my bathroom.

Yes, each time, there is at least one person who thinks I’m being serious.

So maybe on second thought, it’s not so ironic that an unexperienced guy like me would be a dad, because it’s pretty obvious I enjoy psychosocial experiments.

Now, what other kind of unlikely foods can I “teach” my toddler to eat?

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My Son Stuffs His Face (And His Shorts) Full Of Food

May 7, 2012 at 8:52 pm , by 

17 months.

This picture right here is currently one of my favorites of Jack: He’s got a mouth overstuffed with wheat bread.

Sure, it’s not a very flattering picture of him; but it ishilarious because it totally sums up his current eating habits.

Like most toddlers, I assume, Jack has a fairly limited palette. When he’s wolfing down one of the few selections of food he will eat, he doesn’t understand the concept of pacing himself.

He can have a handful and a mouthful of spaghetti with a full plate in front of him and he still manages to mumble, “More?”

Sometimes in the morning after my wife feeds him his typical breakfast consisting of a whole wheat blueberry waffle or two, he will point to the box of Cheerios.

Recently she gave him a small cup of them for the car ride with me to his daycare. He was pretty quiet the whole 30 minute trip there.

Once we arrived, I opened up the hatchback-style door on my Honda Element and began unstrapping him from his car seat. I noticed the cup of Cheerios was empty.

As I lifted him up, Cheerios poured out of his shorts like quarters in a lucky Las Vegas slot machine.

Jack began laughing like a sneaky little squirrel. He totally pranked me.

I take it he wasn’t actually still hungry that morning.

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My Wool-Capped, Wagon-Riding Toddler

May 1, 2012 at 10:21 pm , by 

17 months.

I’m assuming it’s pretty typical for infants and toddlers to not enjoy wearing hats.

My experience has always been that if I could sneak a picture of Jack wearing a hat, I was lucky. And then within a nanosecond later, he would always take the hat off his head.

Until this past weekend.

While Jill was at Publix buying groceries, I had put Jack down for his nap. When he awoke, he was ready for me to lead him on an adventure.

Once downstairs, he saw my new white fedora on the kitchen counter; pointing at it and grunting.

I placed it on his head and he liked it, but he seemed to acknowledge the hat was too big for him.

Curious by his sudden interest in a hat, I ran back upstairs with him to his room to pick through the half dozen caps in his top drawer that he has never wanted to wear before.

For some reason, he instantly fell in love with a striped wool cap with a blue puff ball on the top.

Back downstairs, he saw his Radio Flyer wagon and asked me, “Wah-wah?”

So I packed up Elmo, a book, and a water cup; somehow managing to pull the wagon through the front door with Jack in the wagon with those recently named belongings.

Keep in mind that last Sunday afternoon when this event took place, it was nearly 85 degrees outside. What was weird is that he barely sweated. Instead, his neckline was drenched in drool. (He has molars coming in right now.)

It’s hilarious to me that after insisting on wearing a wool cap while being pulled around the neighborhood in a wagon, the look on his face for the majority of the ride was not happy but, at best, stoic.

Granted, he didn’t want out of the wagon, nor did he want the hat off. In fact, a few times when the hat barely started to slip off, he communicated to me (in grunts) to straighten it up for him.

Once Jack stumbles into a routine, good luck on talking him out of it.

I imagine Jack used this road trip (though it was technically a sidewalk trip) to ponder his life thus far.

Perhaps that hat is his thinking cap? [Insert laugh tracks here.]

So much goes through a 17 month-old boy’s head when he finally gets a chance to just stop and think everything; while watching planes fly overhead on their descent to the Nashville airport.

In our neighborhood, there are over 200 townhouses.

People had to hear the wagon rolling in front of their house; looking out their window to see a man in a white fedora pulling a Radio Flyer wagon containing a seemingly dazed and confused little boy who was obviously willingly wearing a wool cap on a humid afternoon.

But since this is evidently one of Jack’s comforting new routines, I imagine soon, that the neighbors will simply say, “Oh, here comes that father and son wagon team again.”

Jack wore his hat for the rest of the afternoon until it was time for bed.

 

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Teaching Coping Skills To My Toddler

April 24, 2012 at 10:03 pm , by 

17 months.

I’ve heard several fellow critics ofmedicating kids for ADHD say that those children never really learn to cope with their problems; therefore explaining why 23% of the 6 million plus children currently on these untested-yet-FDA-approved psychiatric drugs go on to test positive as bipolar.

Actually, I never really thought of it before, but yes, at some point a child needs to learn coping skills. But how and when?

Leave it to me, Mr. Overkill, but for the past couple of weeks now, I’ve been deliberately teaching “coping skills” to my 17 month-old toddler.

My son Jack is in a stage now where he is testing me on whether I will help him when he doesn’t actually need my help.

For example, he will roll his Hot Wheels car underneath the couch where he can still reach it, but he will whine and look at me, as if I should save the day. He hears the same thing from me each time:

“Son, use your coping skills. You can reach it.”

Similarly, I recently helped Jack harness his bravest coping skills to learn how to pull himself up on our coffee table. It’s now a new hang-out spot; along with the fridge.

Other times, he whines about something neither he nor I can control. Like when I’m driving him home and he drops his book on the floor.

“Son, use your coping skills. There is nothing we can do about your toy until we get home.”

The simplicity of what I am hoping to teach him is this: I will help you unless A) you can figure out a way to deal with it yourself or B) it’s something no one can control.

I guess ultimately, my “coping skills” concept is a blatant rip-off of the famous Serenity Prayer:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.”

If you are familiar with The Dadabase, then you know I am a huge advocate of letting your infant “cry it out” in order to sleep through the night. While Jack has been sleeping through the night for the past 10 months of his 17 month long life, he still tests me during his weekend naps.

You guessed it: I say it all comes down to coping skills.

“Son, use your coping skills. I’ve wrapped you up in this blanket and held you for a minute. You’re very tired and you know you need sleep. I’m setting you down in your bed now and you’re going to learn to fall asleep on your own.”

He “copes” for about 5 minutes then he’s asleep.

My son will experience a life full of “no’s.” Whether it’s me, his friends, his teachers, future employers, and even God Himself.

I know this because at age 31, I’m still struggling with my own coping skills.

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My Son’s Secret Code Word For Me: A Donkey Sound

April 22, 2012 at 10:28 pm , by 

17 months.

After 90 minutes of napping together in a rocking chair in an upstairs bedroom at our friends Jamie and Peter’s house yesterday, my son Jack woke up slightly sweaty, drying himself off on my luxurious Italian arm hair.

He was disorientated. I could see him trying to figure it all out:

Why was he in a little girls’ bedroom? Why did he fall asleep in his Daddy’s arms as opposed to a crib? Was he still in a dream, like in the movie Inception?

Finally he looked up at me with curious eyes and plainly announced our mutual code word…

“Bah-bah.”

Then I said it back to him.

As explained in Stuff My 15 Month Old Says: Current Top 7, “bah-bah” is Jack’s way of making a donkey sound.

It’s recognized as the donkey sound only because of the almost sad, dropping tone Jack uses to imitate a donkey; not because of the word “bah-bah” itself, which doesn’t actually sound like a donkey.

By speaking our mutual, exclusive code word, it was as if to say:

“Okay, Dad. I don’t know how we got in this weird place. But you’re here too, so I’m sure you can find a way to get us out of here. Right?”

I led him downstairs to the living room where he remembered the school bus slide he was playing on earlier, before he got hit by the tranquilizer dart… metaphorically speaking.

He was safe and back to having fun. But he wouldn’t have left that room upstairs if it weren’t for us assuring each other with our code word.

How did “bah-bah” (with a dropping inflection) become our secret word?

Jack is in his car seat in my car for at least an hour every weekday. Sometimes when I haven’t heard a peep out of him in over 10 minutes, I check on him by using our code word.

He always answers back with it.

Then after that became normal for us (go ahead, give yourself a second or two to take that in) I started saying the code word when I pick him up from daycare every day.

It’s not, “Hey Jack, I’m here! I missed you son!”

It’s “bah-bah.”

Personally, I think having a donkey sound for a secret code word is pretty original. Especially for the fact that it’s taking the tone of one animal sound and masking it with the phonetic sound of another.

That would be like mooing a monkey sound; if that’s even possible.

Now Jack and I need a secret handshake.